Youth Mission Trips, YouthWorks, Minneapolis, Minnesota

 Organizational Statement of Faith


Our Purpose
Quite simply, our purpose is to provide life-changing, Christ-centered youth mission opportunities. This is 
our reason for being. We create extraordinarily fun and significant mission adventures, targeted to the needs and 
capabilities of youth, ages 12-19. By crossing borders of race and culture, and by placing students outside 
their comfort zones, we find something wonderful happens: God gets their attention! Without the distractions of 
everyday life, God uses YouthWorks to work in the lives of thousands of teenagers. By attempting to be faithful 
to our purpose, we find God is also at work in each of the communities we serve. Yea God!

Our Values
It is important for people to know what we value and why. We have six points we consider to be our core 
values. These are our essentials:

Youth Minded
We love teenagers! You have probably guessed it - it's in our name. All that we do is focused on providing 
life-changing mission experiences for 12-19 year olds. We design our trips to meet the needs of this age group, 
and we create ministry experiences that will challenge them. We do not believe youth are the church of tomorrow; 
they are part of the church today. They too, can do God's work if we invite them to join us.

Servant Leadership
The world is thirsting for leadership - the kind the church can provide. We need selfless, humble, obedient, 
servant leaders who follow Christ. We desire to emulate the model of Christ, our servant leader (John 13). By 
serving the church, youth ministers and adult leaders, we believe servant leadership will be contagious. Adults 
will serve teens, teens will serve communities and communities will serve the world. By serving these, as Christ 
commands, we also serve Christ Himself.

Relationship Oriented
Our ministry philosophy is a relational one - one that has at its core a ministry of presence. It is our deep 
desire to create and be in relationship with the people we serve. We believe that by following Jesus' example, 
loving as He loved and embodying a Christ-in-the-flesh model, we will make friends. We believe it is in real 
friendship that we give and receive without demeaning each other or stripping one another of dignity. The work we 
do on our trips is focused on the work of building relationships.

Life Change
We believe the message of Christ is about life-change. It was impossible for the disciples of Jesus not to 
have had the direction of their lives changed forever! We desire to present the message of Christ and challenge of 
Christ in all aspects of our mission trips. We trust God will work powerfully to create life-change in our 
lives, and in the lives of every student that participates in a YouthWorks mission trip.

Multi-Denominational
We love the church, and believe it is instrumental in God?s plan to reach the world. There is so much that 
divides and separates us in the church today. The interesting thing is that the focus on denominational 
similarities and differences tends to be an adult thing most youth do not seem to care. United by our shared love of 
Christ, we believe our denominational differences only make us stronger in our diversity. We celebrate the richness 
of all our Christian traditions.

Ministry Focused
Our primary work is ministry. Although we use the building and repairing of homes as a way to see the love of 
Christ (1 John 3:18), this is not an end all. We also love community children and elderly, and serve with local 
ministries. We do not call our trips work camps. We do not spotlight new or repaired houses, or highlight what 
we have accomplished during our stay. The works in our name are the works God will do in our hearts and lives 
if we allow it. Needless to say, all we are and all we hope to be, is Christ-centered.

Cost (per person)

$250.0